Grace Burrowes - Beckman - Lord of Sins

She shook her head slowly from side to side, her face turned from him. In the patient silence, a tear fell from her jaw onto the back of her hand.

“I love your courage,” Beck said softly, lifting her hand to kiss the spot where the tear glistened in the firelight. “I love your determination, your fire, and your tremendous heart. I love your passion and the way you protect your own. I love your unbending integrity and your tender feelings, your—”

Sara pitched into him, wrenching sobs breaking from her. He encircled her in his arms while she cried for the exhausted, bewildered, mean, angry years of her marriage. She cried for herself and Allie and Polly. She cried for her brother and her parents and for the girl she’d been and never would be again.

And then she cried in relief, because she could, because Beckman Haddonfield must truly love her to hold her this way, to bear her secrets and Allie’s and Polly’s. To trust her and wait for her and trust her yet more. When she had cried herself out, she rested in his arms, absorbing the warmth and strength of him for long minutes.

Beck’s chin came to rest on her crown. “Shall I take that for a yes?”

“You may.” Sara unwadded the handkerchief she didn’t recall Beck passing to her. “But I want to say it.”

“I want to hear it. As often as you like, for the rest of my life.”

“I love you, Beckman Sylvanus Haddonfield,” Sara said, her voice hitching in the aftermath of her tears. “I love you, Beck.”

“Practice as often as you please. I love you, and I will love hearing you say it.”

“I love you.” Sara rose and extended a hand. “I love you. I will always love you. It’s a rainy afternoon, we have hours of privacy, and I love you.”

In the years to come, they often stole away for hours of privacy on rainy afternoons. Sometimes Sara would play her violin for Beck, and sometimes they’d pass hours in loving each other without words.

Other times, they’d talk, and Sara would drowse on Beck’s chest, enthralled with the music of his voice and the melodies of his hands on her naked body. Whether they loved silently or with noisy, unbridled passion, secrets never again had the power to separate them or to dim the love they shared for the rest of their lives.

A significant question for me as this story wandered into my imagination was whether there are child prodigies among the painters. Mozart is the quintessential musical wundkerkind, but I hadn’t come across his like elsewhere in the arts. I asked the art historians in my family (we have two) if they knew of such, and the example that came immediately to mind was Pablo Picasso. A little nosing around also brought to light the example of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who was contributing to his family’s upkeep significantly with his sketching by the time he was ten years old. Sir Thomas went on to lead the Royal Academy, and his portraits continue to delight us to this day.

A yet more interesting case was that of Angelica Kauffmann, a Swiss-Austrian lady who became one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy. By the time she was thirteen, Angelica was painting portraits professionally, and she went on to trade portraits with Sir Joshua Reynolds. Alas for the ladies, when the two female founding members of the Academy died, it took more than a century for that august body to again admit a female artist as a Royal Academician.

I love this story, love a tale of people wandering far from home for all the wrong reasons, people who then (eventually) find the courage to come back to the love they need and deserve. Credit goes to my editor, Deb Werksman, for choosing Beckman and Sara’s tale over some less unconventional offerings, and for making time in the middle of a tempest to give the story a thorough buffing.

As always, Skye, Cat, Susie, and Danielle are manning various oars to row the manuscript along, and I cannot thank them often enough.

I’d also like to thank my parents, who early and often in my childhood loaded as many as five children into a station wagon and drove us coast to coast of a summer holiday. We learn things when we leave home, and we learn things when we come home, too.